261 Mass. 125 | Mass. | 1927
This case comes before us on reservation upon the petition and demurrer for determination whether the court has jurisdiction to entertain the petition, “it being agreed that if jurisdiction exists probable cause has been shown and the petition may be filed and the case stand for hearing on the merits.”
The allegations of the petition in substance are that the petitioner is the owner of about twenty acres of land in the town of Dennis and has filed a petition in the Land Court for registration of the title thereto; that one Weatherbee has appeared in opposition to that petition and has filed answer thereto; that “in 1638 or 1639 the Plymouth Colony granted certain lands at Matacheeset later called Yarmouth to certain persons who thereupon became the Yarmouth Proprietors and said Yarmouth Proprietors and their descendants continued to hold said lands or a part thereof until on or about 1740 when all said lands held in common as afore said were divided and the said proprietorship came to an end;” that in 1924 one of the respondents procured to be given to himself from divers named persons certain assignments reciting that the assignors were descendants of ancient proprietors of Yarmouth and other towns in the Plymouth Colony and purporting to assign one fourth of the interests or rights owned by each in lands; that the assignee has assigned a one-fifth interest in the land thus acquired to the four other individual respondents except Weatherbee; that these five have gone through the form of being called together as proprietors of lands or other real
The defendants have demurred on the grounds (1) that the petition does not present a case in which quo warranto lies and (2) that the petitioner has a plain and adequate remedy at law.
The petition is brought under G. L. c. 249, § 6, whereby “A person whose private right or interest has been injured or is put in hazard, by the exercise of a franchise or privilege not conferred by law, by a private corporation or by persons claiming to be a private corporation . . . may apply ... for leave to file an information in the nature of a quo warranto.”
The allegations of the bill are ample to the effect that four of the individual respondents are pretending to exercise the
The allegations of the petition are sufficient also to bring the case within the jurisdictional limits of the governing statute, in that a private right or interest of the petitioner has been put in hazard or injured by the pretended exercise of the franchise to be a corporation. The private right of the petitioner is his title to the valuable tract of land described in the petition. It has been put in hazard by the assertion of some title thereto by such a corporation as the respondent proprietors. Such a corporation is a more formidable claimant to title than an individual or an ordinary business corporation. The principles of law governing
Petition may be filed and case stand for hearing on the merits.